The Enlightenment

The Enlightenment was a cultural movement that took place mostly in the 18th century and mainly in France, Great Britain, and Germany.

After the Renaissance (15th and 16th centuries) and the Scientific Revolution (17th century), the Enlightenment can be seen as its natural continuation. Enlightened thinkers such as Voltaire, Diderot and Rousseau in France, David Hume and Adam Smith in Great Britain and Herder, Goethe and Kant in Germany aimed to apply human reasoning and free exchange of ideas to the social and political world.

If the Renaissance had liberated art from the norms and conventions of the Middle Ages and the Scientific Revolution had freed the scientific thought from religious dogmas and the authority of ancient philosophy, then the Enlightenment is an attempt to liberate society from the rules and political conventions inherited from previous centuries. With their work, enlightened thinkers attempted to promote new ideals and values among their fellow citizens and to influence the rules of their countries.

What are the main ideas that define the Enlightenment? What are the values promoted by enlightened thinkers? We can list at least four key values:

• Humanism: Humans are at the center of our concerns. Not following God's commands or reaching our afterlife salvation, but human happiness in this world is the goal that governments must achieve.

• Rationality: Reason supported by evidence is the main method for deciding between competing alternatives and for reaching a consensus between peoples of different faiths. Rational tolerance replaces religious fanaticism.

• Freedom: liberty from political tyranny and from religious ideologies are necessary conditions for a full development of our rational capabilities. Science and philosophy both requiere not only political and religious freedom but also freedom of speech and of press: scientists and philosophers should not be prosecuted for proclaiming and defending their ideas.

• Progress: As a result of the combined effect of the three previous values: humanism as a goal, rationality as a method and freedom as a fundamental right, enlightened thinkers predict material improvement (food, health, well-being) and social advance (peace, equality, justice).

Excerpts from What is Enlightenment?

In 1784, Kant published a brief essay with the title An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? In his essay, Kant explains what the Enlightenment means to him. Like many of his intellectual contemporaries, he wanted to disseminate the new enlightened ideals and values among the general public.

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! “Have courage to use your own understanding!”--that is the motto of enlightenment.

Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why such a large part of mankind gladly remain minors all their lives, long after nature has freed them from external guidance. They are the reasons why it is so easy for others to set themselves up as guardians. It is so comfortable to be a minor.

Thus, it is difficult for any individual man to work himself out of the immaturity that has all but become his nature. He has even become fond of this state and for the time being is actually incapable of using his own understanding, for no one has ever allowed him to attempt it. Rules and formulas, those mechanical aids to the rational use, or rather misuse, of his natural gifts, are the shackles of a permanent immaturity. Whoever threw them off would still make only an uncertain leap over the smallest ditch, since he is unaccustomed to this kind of free movement. Consequently, only a few have succeeded, by cultivating their own minds, in freeing themselves from immaturity and pursuing a secure course.

Nothing is required for this enlightenment, however, except freedom; and the freedom in question is the least harmful of all, namely, the freedom to use reason publicly in all matters.

By the public use of one's own reason I understand the use that anyone as a scholar makes of reason before the entire literate world.

[...] as a scholar who speaks through his writings to the public [...] enjoys in this public use of reason an unrestricted freedom to use his own rational capacities and to speak his own mind.

A man may put off enlightenment with regard to what he ought to know, though only for a short time and for his own person; but to renounce it for himself, or, even more, for subsequent generations, is to violate and trample man's divine rights underfoot.

If it is now asked, “Do we presently live in an enlightened age?” the answer is, “No, but we do live in an age of enlightenment.” As matters now stand, a great deal is still lacking in order for men as a whole to be, or even to put themselves into a position to be able without external guidance to apply understanding confidently to religious issues. But we do have clear indications that the way is now being opened for men to proceed freely in this direction and that the obstacles to general enlightenment [...] are gradually diminishing.